Why Is It Better To Have School Lunches?

To start off, school lunches taste horrible, and students deserve better. Many students will walk up to the cafeteria line expecting to enjoy what’s being served, when it reality, they approach the food and it looks disgusting. Multiple times students at Auburndale High school won’t enjoy the food that they picked out originally. Sitting down at the lunch table they would realize that the fruits such as apples or bananas are rotten or the chicken sandwich that was picked out is still undercooked and mushy. Imagine starving all day and then when it comes time for the lunch, nothing is appealing as it should be. Students tend to either not eat lunch at all and stay hungry for the rest of the school day or eat food from someone else who packed
“Up to $1 billion of “surplus” fruits, vegetables, and meats” are sent to the program that the USDA supplies “and, rather than cooking them into healthy meals, it’s into high-fat processed foods.” (Laskawy). Not only do the ingredients affect the food, but health inspections can affect the flavor of the food as well. “In 22 public schools in Orange County, Florida, cockroaches weren’t spotted during the daytime, revealing their (huge) numbers only when a nighttime inspection was finally conducted. Some schools were forced to throw away dry food because of possible cockroach contamination.” (“6”). Walking the halls of many high schools in Polk County, cockroaches would be seen everywhere whether it was on the wall or on the ground, students would never know if any were in the cafeteria. Constantly students are complaining about the way the food taste at school and in a survey conducted at high school of EBC students it showed that “…the average rating of food quality was 2.6 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 94 percent of students marking 5 or below” and 76% agree that there aren’t many food options and after lunch is over, students don’t feel very full (“Letter”). [Clincher to be
With the lack of nutrition from the school food, health risks can take a factor creating problems such as obesity, to cardiovascular problems, and cancer later in life (Kelleher). In a 2006 data study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it showed that 5 to 17 years old, almost 60% of overweight children had at least one cardiovascular disease risk factor (Kelleher). Having unhealthy food menu items is just going to add on to that percentage. JoAnne Robinett reports that the “…government moves surplus agricultural commodities into the school-lunch program; much of it canned goods and processed chicken products.” (Kelleher). According to Kelleher, kids in upper middle class districts are less nutritional since they can eat more snacks, than kids in poorer districts. That just shows kids need to more aware of nutrition. Researchers from Xavier University did a surveyed 535 students finding out that 80% of students who ate lunch only did it because they were hungry and 10% said it was because there was good variety and quality of food (Tucker). Also with the students who did not eat lunch got there sources of food from different areas such as vending machines, local sores, and fast food